Thank you, breakingtwilight, for putting in words processes and feelings I am having trouble expressing. While I have no doubt you have a completely different reason or reasons for expressing yourself in this writing, the general sentiments expressed seem to connect to specific patterns in my life. I specifically enjoy your calm approach to exploring the shades and depths of what we call reality.

When I dream of my lover is she a dream or a memory? When I recall my lover is the memory true or changed by my dreams, needs, fantasies or environ? When I meet my lover am I seeing her as she really is or am I blinding myself to her many qualities that do not match my idealzed version of her?

When we wake up to realize our dilemma of being in love with the dream or the ideal instead of the real person sitting in front of us do we realize that the "quiet lie" is something we sometimes pull over on our own selves and sometimes about our own selves?

Still, I enjoy the dreams and memories I have of fomer loves and lives. They are instructive (are they not?) in how I erred in one relationship or another and helped me to identify not only the kind of person I loved and wanted in my life, but the person I wanted to become.

For me the quiet lie is that we will "live happily ever after". The truth is that things change and not everything is under our control and that all things - good and bad - will come to an end.

To conclude, your lovely writing informs me to enjoy my dreams and memories and those rare brief moments of happiness in whatever worlds I encounter them, for the dream, that moment in life, or that memory will pass in the inevitability of time. Thank you for such a deeply evocative piece of writing. JP